Scoop: Gone Swimmin’.

TORRES - IMAGE: Erica Eve

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SO LONG, SHANE: Comedian Shane Torres isdecamping to New York City, as WW first reported last week. The Texas-born Torres—runner-up in WW’s
Funniest 5 and last year’s winner of Portland’s Funniest Person contest
at Helium Comedy Club—says he plans to leave in mid-October and gig
across the country on his way to the East Coast. “I hope there will be a
day when a comedian can stay here and be Dave Chappelle,” Torres says.
“There are quite a few comedians that have made their home in the
Northwest and done well, but they’re sadly not household names.” Torres
is the latest in a line of comedians—Matt Braunger, Ron Funches, Ian
Karmel—to depart Portland. Those three all chose L.A. Why did Torres opt
for New York instead? “You can do five or six sets a night,” he says. Also? “Better pizza.” >> Speaking of Funches, his NBC sitcom, Undateable, aired its final episodes in early July. No word yet about a second season, but The Washington Post reported the show wrapped “its first (and probably last) season.”

GREAT, BUT FOR THEO:Portland is the only American city worth living in, according to London’s Monocle
magazine, which just dropped its annual list of the most livable cities
in the world. Portland again makes the list at No. 23. Portlanders have
“a somewhat self-satisfied glow,” according to contributor Zach Dundas, who moonlights as the editor of Portland Monthly. The one thing Monocle editors would fix? “A better daily newspaper.” Dundas says he didn’t write that swipe directed at The Oregonian.

CITRUS DRUNK: Hi-Wheel Wine & Mead Co. plans to open a taproom and winery at 6719 NE 18th Ave. in Woodlawn, offering a type of wine that owner Ken Bonnin Jr. says he invented after
seven years of experiments. Hi-Wheel’s wines are carbonated, 7 percent
ABV citrus wines fermented wholly from lime, lemon or grapefruit. In the
same space, Nathan Mattis is starting Portland’s first meadery,
Fringe Meadery. Mattis had been enlisted as a distiller for Still Life
Spirits at the same address—a distillery making vodka with rainwater—but
when Still Life ceased operations, Mattis began his own mead company.
The Hi-Wheel Wine & Mead Co. taproom plans to open in September,
with 10 taps of wine and cider. Fringe plans to bottle and sell its mead
in the same space. >> Timothy John Clark has filed an application
to open a bar, Pour Sports, in the former Grand Cafe space at
832 SE Grand Ave. The Grand Cafe was presided over by Frank Peters,
former manager of the Portland Mavericks baseball team. >>
Eastside Distilling, maker of Burnside Bourbon, has filed a
liquor-license application to open a tasting room in the restaurant basement of the Modern Man barber shop at 3956 N Mississippi Ave.

NEW TURNS: Oregon Ballet Theatre announced July 28 the hiring of a new executive director, Dennis Buehler,
formerly of the Milwaukee Ballet. The state’s premier ballet company
has been without an executive director for more than two years, since
Diane Syrcle left in May 2012 for a position at the Oregon Symphony. The
executive director is in charge of managing the company’s operations,
including its finances, which for the past several years have been
unsteady. Buehler spent seven years at the Milwaukee Ballet. OBT’s
artistic director, Kevin Irving, who arrived at the company last summer,
will stay on for three more seasons.